We had so much fun talking about conversation systems last week, we decided to give it another go.

Co-Producers

This episode of Spam Spam Spam Humbug is brought to you by our Patreon backers; thank you to everyone who supports Spam Spam Spam Humbug and the Ultima Codex by that means. And, as always, a hearty thank you to our Patreon co-producers: Seth, Johnny, Dominik, Chris, Violation, Adam, Erik, Thorwan, Cody, Pascal, Neil, and Helgraf.

New Ultima Dragons

Follow-Up From Previous Episode(s)

Pokémon GO is No Longer the Top-Grossing iPhone App in the US - “While Clash Royale currently holds the record for longest top gross U.S. iPhone app (347 days), 'Pokemon GO managed 42 more consecutive days atop the chart than the game that unseated it, Clash Royale, and more than twice as many days as the 10th game on the chart, The Simpsons: Tapped Out, which stayed at the top for 15 days.' Hopefully a new update for Pokémon GO puts it back on top.“

Podcast Topic(s)

We continue to pick apart conversation systems, and different implementations thereof. We also explore the idea of conversation systems as progression mechanics in games, and Goldenflame Dragon gives us some insight on how conversations in The Dark Unknown developed.

And while it would seem we all agree, in general at least, that it's best for game developers to get their game systems down pat before populating significant content into those systems, this new era of crowdfunded (and crowdsourced) games has kind of thrown a spanner in the works. Consequently, in games like Shroud of the Avatar (among others), we are seeing players exposed to systems that have been minimally — or incompletely — implemented, which must then be patched on the fly, even as content is being added to them. Which, needless to say, tends to give less-than-ideal impressions.